


Nothing Left to Be Afraid Of

by howboutinotdothis



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Suicide Attempt, cynthia is trying to be a good mom but it's v hard, discussion of suicide, larry is an asshole but evan still loves him, parent swap au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-26 23:38:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10797162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howboutinotdothis/pseuds/howboutinotdothis
Summary: This is what he needs—this is what he deserves. This is how he fixes things. Evan’s going to fix everything today.He’s finally going to do something right.





	Nothing Left to Be Afraid Of

**Author's Note:**

> yo, so this is based on [my parent swap au](https://jaredkleinmanisanerd.tumblr.com/post/160169569459/consider-parent-swap-au-evan-is-larry-and)! I just really wanted to write this part of it, I probably won't write any more though because I have too many other projects rn lmao 
> 
> Probably ooc, probably all over the place, probably makes no sense.
> 
> Comments/kudos/crit always welcome!
> 
> WARNING: Lots of thinking about suicide and a suicide attempt in this story, so please don't read if those subjects are difficult for you!

The change is gradual. So gradual, in fact, that Evan hardly noticed what was going on until he woke up one morning and realized he’d transformed from an awkward, lanky elementary schooler to an actual human disaster. He avoided his parents’ eyes, he never spoke in class, not even when he was called on, and he’d stopped going outside to play kickball at recess, preferring to stay inside and read a book while Alana works on the extra math homework her parents assign her.

It took his mom and dad a while to realize that something was up. They were having what his mom called a “little tiff here and there” and what Alana called “serious marital problems,” so it’s not shocking that Evan’s newfound fear of socializing flew under the radar for a while. Evan wasn’t dumb, you know—he could tell just as well as anybody else that his parents seemed to be on a one-way trip to Divorce City. He could hear their hushed arguments downstairs after he went to bed every night, he caught the snide remarks his dad would throw at his mom over breakfast, and he noticed that his dad started staying out later and later each night to the point that he’d even started sleeping in his office just to avoid coming home. That doesn’t exactly paint a picture of marital bliss.

His mom seemed to come to her senses when she came to the book fair with Evan. He’d gone through a few days earlier with Alana and wrote down a list of all the books he wanted, organizing them so that the ones at the top were ones he desperately wanted to read and the ones at the bottom were ones he wouldn’t mind getting, so all they had to do was grab the books off the shelves and pay for them.

His mother was accosted by one of the other moms that lived in their neighborhood—Evan vaguely recognized her from one of his mom’s book club meetings. She was the one that his mother laughed at the moment she left because she didn’t realize she had a chunk of hot pink lipstick on her teeth the whole night. His mom gave him his stack of books and some crisp twenty dollar bills, instructing him to go to the cashier and buy the books while she caught up with her friend.

Evan’s heart was pounding and his mouth was dry and he couldn’t talk to the cashier—he just _couldn’t_. Something terrible would happen if he did. He’d say something horribly offensive and make the cashier cry—or, or he’d drop the money while he was trying to hand it over and it would fall under one of the book shelves where he couldn’t get it and then one of the teachers would have to move the book shelf so Evan could get the bill and everyone would be angry and disappointed in him—or he won’t have enough and he’ll have to go to his mom and hold up the line while she digs around in her purse for her wallet and then she won’t have any more cash so she’ll have to leave her friend to come use her credit card and she’ll be upset with him because he interrupted her conversation and the car ride home will be silent and awful and he wouldn’t be able to handle it, he couldn’t—he couldn’t handle feeling his mom’s disappointment. He _couldn’t_.

So, while his mom was chatting up her friend and gloating about how well Evan did on his most recent book report, Evan returned the books to their shelves, keeping his head down and avoiding the questioning gaze of the school librarian. The school librarian was a sweet older lady who’d been nothing but nice to Evan and Alana, always letting them eat lunch in the library and suggesting books to them that she thought they might like. His skin felt hot with shame. He was disappointing her. He’s disappointing her by not buying these books and Evan didn’t want to disappoint anyone, ever, so now he was stuck between a rock and a hard place because there was no good option. A damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation if he ever saw one.

“Evan, sweetheart, what’s going on? Why are you putting your books back?”

Evan jumped out of his skin when his mother rested her hand on his shoulder, nearly dropping the last book, which he’d been clutching tightly to his chest. It was the newest installment in the Percy Jackson series and it was the book he’d been most excited to read.

“I, um. I changed my mind. I don’t—I don’t want any books. I’m sorry.” Evan gingerly placed the book back on the shelve before handing his mother her money back, cringing when he realized he’d wrinkled the new bills.

The look of concern on his mother’s face made Evan’s stomach churn. She placed the back of her hand against his forehead. “You feel warm, honey. Are you not feeling well?”

Evan nodded jerkily. He didn’t feel well—he didn’t feel well at all. His stomach was starting to hurt and his skin felt tight and hot and there was a weight on his chest pressing down on his lungs, preventing him from getting enough air, and he really didn’t want to be in the library right then. He wanted to leave. He wanted to go home.

“Do you want me to sign you out? I don’t want you getting sick at school.”

Evan nodded again and his mother took him by the hand, leading him out of the library packed tight with loud people. Everything was too loud and his mom’s hand was too warm and his clothes were too scratchy and Evan thought that that must be what dying feels like, he must have been dying, he was going to die and his mom was going to be so upset and his dad was going to be so disappointed—

“Hey, sweetie, what’s wrong? Why are you crying? Are you hurt?” They stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, halfway to the school office. His mom bent down to look him in the eyes, using the sleeve of her cardigan to scrub away his tears, looking terribly concerned. Evan shook his head violently.

“Then what’s going on, baby? I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s going on.”

So he did. Evan told her about how scared he’d been lately, about how his stomach hurt when he had to talk to people he didn’t know well, about how he had trouble breathing when they called on him in class, about how he knew something horrible was going to happen if he bought the books himself so he couldn’t. His mom looked shocked and guilty—she probably felt bad about not noticing what was going on with him. She smoothed down his hair and offered him a comforting smile, promising him that things were going to be okay and that she’d take care of him. She told him how much she loved him and how proud she was of him.

She signed him out in the office, making casual small talk with the secretary, her fake, overly friendly smile plastered on her face. Evan didn’t like when his mom looked like that. He liked it better when she smiled for real when he said something funny or when dad brought her flowers for no reason.

His mom let him sit in the front seat on the way home and she bought him ice cream from one of the fast food places his dad took him sometimes, making him promise not to tell his mom because “this is our little secret, bud.” His dad hadn’t taken him out for junk food in a while. He was probably just busy with work.

That night, Evan heard the first argument his parents had that was about him. It was the first of many, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever forget his mother screaming “he needs help, Larry! Why don’t you want to help our son?”

He couldn’t hear his father’s response clearly, but whatever it was made his mom burst into tears and storm into their bedroom, slamming the door shut and locking it tight. He heard his dad’s loud sighs as he made the couch up for him to sleep on it. Eventually, Evan left the landing at the top of his stairs and went back into his room, crawling into bed and snuggling up with one of the ragged stuffed animals his dad kept telling him to get rid of because big boys don’t sleep with pink stuffed rabbits.

After that, Evan stopped telling his mom so much. He fed her lies about how he would go play with the other kids at recess and about how he would answer questions in math class. He devoted all of his free time to studying, giving up the few hobbies he had like building model trucks and writing stories. He brought home test papers with 100s and A’s to be hung up on the fridge and he started working ahead and studying more advanced subjects like Alana did. He’d work algebra problems with her at lunch when she wasn’t busy with extracurricular activities and, when she was busy, he’d read the books for English classes he wouldn’t be in for a few years yet.

One day, while looking for a book that could illustrate how volcanoes work more accurately than his flimsy excuse for a textbook, he stumbled across a tree identification guide. Evan flipped through the pages, skimming paragraphs about leaf shape and vein patterns, and it reminded him of the national park his parents took him to when he was a kid. His dad would carry him on his back when he’d get tired, laughing at the jokes his mother would make about the squirrels running crazily along the forest floor and the odd fungus patterns on the tree trunks. They’d eat messy peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at the picnic tables and his dad would complement his mom on her cooking and his mom would gently hit his shoulder, saying he gave her too much credit for slapping two pieces of bread together. Evan would get pink on his cheeks and the tips of his ears from the sun and, when they’d get back home after a long day at the park, his mom would rub aloe vera on his face, saying that no amount of sun screen could protect Evan from the sun’s rays, apparently. His dad would laugh while he rubbed aloe vera on his own sunburned skin, saying that it was just in his genes to be easily burned.

Evan checked out the book. He read through the whole thing and then checked out another book about trees. Then another. And then another. Soon, he’d exhausted the school library’s supply of books on trees and he’d started making his mom drive him to the public library to check out books on trees from there. When he was reading those books, it was almost like he was back there in the park with parents who loved each other instead of just tolerating each other for his sake. Reading those books, thinking about trees, it helped calm him down and it made him feel like maybe his mom was right, like maybe things would be okay. Like maybe he could get past this.

The fear got worse as he got older, coming to a head sophomore year of high school when he came to the conclusion that he didn’t have any friends. Even Alana wasn’t really his friend anymore—no, she was more of an acquaintance than anything. Someone that he used to know who he’ll say hi to in the halls or who he’ll work with on partner projects in class, but not a friend. And he didn’t have anyone besides Alana. So he was alone.

Completely and utterly alone.

He sat alone in homeroom, he sat alone at lunch, and he ran alone at track practice after school. He hated track—he only joined it because he thought that maybe if he showed interest in something masculine like sports his dad would spend more time with him. Maybe his dad would even be proud of him. But he didn’t and he wasn’t. Larry Murphy was too busy being a hotshot defense attorney to spend time with his son or work on his marriage with his wife. Nothing—not track, not a perfect score on the PSAT, not a 4.0 GPA, not the hours upon hours of community service from volunteering with his mother at the community garden—was going to make his dad want to be around him. Evan was just—he was just a huge disappointment, and nothing was ever going to change that.

That’s why he’s here, the summer before his senior year, walking down one of the longer trails through the national forest, narrowly avoiding tripping over roots and scrambling awkwardly over felled trees. It’s a warm day with a slight breeze that prevents the air from feeling too stifling. The sun is out in full force, beating down on his exposed skin. Evan didn’t bother putting on sunscreen—if things progress the way he thinks they will, his skin won’t have time to turn pink and start peeling.

His backpack is light on his back. There’s a sandwich his mother thrust upon him before he could escape the house this morning, a refillable water bottle filled to the brim with ice cubes, and his car keys in there. Normally, he’d have packed more things—a flashlight in case he gets lost and can’t find his way back before dark, a rain coat in case it starts pouring randomly as has been known to happen, his glasses in case he gets something in his contacts and he has to pop them out, an extra pair of socks in case his get wet, a bottle of bug spray, a bottle of sunscreen, and the small notebook full of his observations from his nature walks and his poor sketches of the forest’s lush flora. This is the least prepared he’s ever been on one of his walks and it feels kind of freeing, knowing that he won’t even need the few meager belongings he brought with him for much longer. He feels light—giddy almost. The end is in sight. There’s nothing left to be afraid of.

Evan’s thought about it a lot. What the best way to go would be. Overdoses lead to convulsions and seizures and choking on your own vomit. Hanging could be horrible if his neck didn’t break and he just ended up suffocating. Carbon monoxide poisoning is a lot of seizures and suffocating pain, too, so that’s out. Cutting would be slow-going and he doesn’t have a very high pain tolerance, so he’d chicken out halfway through probably and he’d have to call an ambulance and he’d go to the hospital and have to get stitched up and his dad would look at him all disappointed and his mom would cry and—

Yeah, cutting’s out. His parents don’t have any guns. So, that pretty much just leaves falling from some place up high. And it will be falling—he’ll make sure it looks like he just slipped, lost his grip on a branch, unintentionally fell to his death. Because his parents don’t deserve to go through all the stuff that comes from having your kid kill themselves. An accidental death is better.

He stops in front of his tree. His favorite tree—the tree he climbs in every time he comes here, the tree he loves to sit in, looking out on the world from way up high, thinking that a place that’s so beautiful can’t be all that bad. The tree he used to climb with Alana when his parents could talk hers and to letting her come to the park with them, the tree his parents used to stop at so they could take pictures and drink water before continuing down the trail, the tree that makes him feel safe and calm even now when he knows he’s not safe and he shouldn’t be calm.

Evan places the backpack on the ground beside the tree, obscuring it from view by moving some branches from a nearby bush in front of it. He’d rather his car not get stolen before—before someone finds him.

He grabs onto one of the tree’s low-hanging branches and hauls himself up, feeling that satisfying burn that comes from using your upper body strength to scale a tree. He can hear the sounds of the forest around him as he climbs higher and higher—the soft chirping of the birds, the fluttering of the leaves in the breeze, the crunching of branches as animals scamper across the forest floor, the faraway sound of children laughing and families chattering. He feels a pang of guilt; he doesn’t want some poor kid stumbling across his body, but it’s nearly dinner time now, so hopefully people will clear out before—before it happens. The fact that the thought of traumatizing a young kid isn’t enough to stop him seems to confirm Evan’s long-held belief that he’s a truly awful person, so he continues climbing the tree, letting the rough bark dig into the sensitive skin on the palms of his hands. This is what he needs—this is what he _deserves_. This is how he fixes things. Evan’s going to fix everything today.

He’s finally going to do something right.

Once he feels like he’s high enough up, Evan settles on one of the branches, leaning against the trunk as he appreciates the view one last time. The sun is incredibly bright as it begins its descent beyond the horizon, shining gold on his face. He takes that as a sign—a sign that he’s made the right decision, that he’s doing the right thing.

The world wouldn’t look so beautiful right now, he thinks, if he was making the wrong choice.

Evan thinks about his mother. He thinks about how she’s cut off all of her hair so it’s something she calls a “lob” now, insisting that all the other moms are getting them. He thinks about how she goes on yoga retreats and takes cooking classes and throws herself into anything and everything, desperately trying to find a purpose, something to hold onto amidst the chaos of her personal life. He thinks about how all she has in the world is a judgmental mother, a distant husband, and a complete fuck up for a son. He thinks about how she still puts his papers on the fridge when he gets good grades, about how she has all of his old drawings and school work in an expandable folder in the basement, about how he’s seen her flipping through their photo albums in the dead of night when she should be sleeping, smiling to herself as she traces the features of a much younger Evan who’s holding up an award for a story he wrote, looking happier than he has in years. He thinks about how she makes a point to tell him she loves him every day before he goes to school and how she reminds him of how proud she is of him, her perfect, beautiful little boy, how she’ll be proud of him no matter what.

Evan thinks that he might have discovered the one thing he could do to disappoint her.

Evan thinks about his dad, too. He thinks about the lipstick stains on his dad’s shirt collar when he comes home from a long night at the office, the stench of cheap perfume clinging to his father that makes his eyes water for more reasons than the fact that it smells like the female equivalent of Axe body spray. He thinks about how his dad keeps telling him that he needs to buckle down, that he needs to keep his nose clean, that he needs to do more and be more so that he can have the life his father wants him to live. He thinks about the baseball glove lying on his dresser, meticulously broken in, waiting for a game of catch that’s never going to come. He thinks about the empty seat beside his mother at his track meets, the empty seat at the kitchen table during dinner, the empty armchair in the living room on family night.

Evan knows, deep down, that his parents are only still together because of him. Because they don’t want to be the people who get a divorce and ruin their kid’s life. Maybe when he’s gone they’ll finally do what they’ve needed to since he was seven. Or maybe they won’t. Maybe nothing will change and his dad will keep cheating and his mom will continue to be miserable.

Maybe his death will be as pointless as his life.

He feels his confidence begin to wane. Maybe this isn’t the best idea—maybe he should climb down, drive home, hug his mom. Tell her that she can leave if she wants. Tell her that she doesn’t have to stay with his dad on his account, tell her that she doesn’t need him or his dad, that she’ll be fine on her own. She deserves better than what she got. She deserves a loving husband and a devoted son. Maybe she’ll get that. Evan hopes she’ll get that.

He lets go.

**Author's Note:**

> feel free to hit me up on ze tumblr at @jaredkleinmanisanerd!


End file.
